Tony Mowbray explains his key message to Sunderland players ahead of big Championship tests

Three defeats have put a major dent in the club's play-off push, and Mowbray's already threadbare squad has been hit further by a season-ending injury to Aji Alese. Mowbray was hit by another injury during training to an unnamed player on Friday, though the head coach was hopeful at that stage it was not a serious issue.

They will nevertheless be a major doubt for the clash at Carrow Road, where David Wagner's side have been improving rapidly from an unexpectedly poor start to the campaign and have now pushed themselves into the play-off places.

It starts a daunting run of fixtures for the Black Cats, who then face Sheffield United and Luton Town at the Stadium of Light before travelling to Burnley after the international break.

It's a big test for a group lacking depth, but Mowbray insisted in his pre-match press conference that no one has written off their hopes of pushing back up towards the top of the table.

And he says that their performance against Fulham in the FA Cup earlier this year should give them every confidence that they can play their own way and thrive in the week ahead and beyond.

"We've sort of doubled down on what we feel we're good at really, we've got to keep going and I don't think you just throw everything in the bin after one result like that," Mowbray said.

"There's so much good stuff that's gone on this season and we need to keep applying it - keep believing in what we do and how we play. Norwich is obviously a tough game, they've been in the Premier League and as you would expect they've pushed up into the top six now.

"We know that it's a tough game away from home, but we've faced games like these in the past and we will hopefully go and give a really good account of ourselves and make it difficult for them.

"We need to test ourselves and I think this will be a good football match, they're a good team and they want to play with the ball. It will be a good test for us to see if we can compete at the level they play at and I'm sure that we can. I said to the players this week, I was watching back some of the chances that we created at Fulham - the energy, drive and willingness to get into the box against a team right up in the Premier League.

"So we shouldn't fear competing in a football game against anyone, and then we have two home games against teams right up there. I know we're a bit understrength at the moment but we should feel that with our crowd behind us, we can make these teams feel that they're in a real football match."